“The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope.”

“Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories.”

“Truth resists being projected into the realm of knowledge.”

“All efforts to make politics aesthetic culminate in one thing, war.”

“Death is the sanction of everything the story-teller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.”

“Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.”

“A prose that is altogether alive demands something of the reader that the ordinary novel reader is not prepared to give.”

“Prose divides shame into stations.”

“He lifted his arm that had been resting on her shoulders and gazed at the words she had written on his hand. He had been branded as cattle are branded to show whom they belong to. The cold mountain...”